Third Time Unlucky
by Vett999
Summary: Even spies got to be the other side of the hidden camera and take the glory occasionally. But if the third time was the charm, it wasn't a good luck charm.


_If you remember nothing else, remember timing. Everything else might be perfect, but playing the right note at the wrong time is even worse than the alternative because it's not only wrong, but it also means you weren't concentrating. Oh – and don't get shot._

Edward Brooks, explaining life, undercover operations and ensembles to Rebecca

_Cesate, Milan, Lombardy. 05/01/2006._

'One Bismark, one Caprese, potato croquettes and a bottle of coke?' said Becca, smiling at the heavy-set man who opened the door. As they expected, Bravo three – the only person in the house with a clean record – was the one to deal with the delivery girl, hopefully ensuring that the other two occupants would already be sitting down at the kitchen table in preparation for their Friday night pizza.

Three nodded, fishing a thick wad of euros out of his jeans pocket and painstakingly doing the mental arithmetic in his head. The majority of the notes were fifty euro – no normal person carried a thousand euro around in cash. This op was a complete waste of Mr Brooks' and her skills, though she supposed that any moron was capable of following basic instructions and, even if the occupants couldn't meet those lofty standards, the explosion when they compounded the mistake they'd already made in their half-constructed bomb would take out the houses either side, functioning IED or not.

Three stopped riffling through the notes briefly as the door to the bathroom opened and Bravo one –messenger-boy-in-chief Silvio di Rosso – walked into the hall. Three's eyes were wide in panic and One was gawping at her, as though unable to believe that the delivery had arrived.

'Sorry about my friend,' said One, smiling weakly at her. 'I think I've got something smaller in the kitchen. If you'd just...'

'Sure,' she said, forcing herself not to react as she stepped inside the house and began following One to wherever he'd stashed his gun. Time to play off the type ones' sheet... she began swinging the insulated delivery bag, increasing the pressure inside the bottle of coke within as she palmed the pen from the pocket of her recently acquired uniform.

The kitchen looked out onto a five-by-five metre yard, surrounded by a brick wall. Or so she assumed: the window was effectively blocked by the leaning tower of pasta plates dumped in the sink. The table was set, cutlery and plates in three places around the square table, with Bravo two tucking his chair right up to edge as they came in. He was hiding something below the table: the only question was _what?_

Becca turned to her left and roughly dumped the bag onto the table, the plates buzzing from the impact. 'That's fifteen euro fifty, please.'

As One opened a drawer she pulled the Velcro flap on the bag open, craning her head around to look expectantly at him. He remained facing away from her as he pulled something out of the drawer. What she could see of it appeared to have a short, rectangular handle and was relatively heavy and metallic. It was close enough.

She spun and lashed out with the pen in her right hand, stabbing it into Three's jugular.

Her left hand yanked the bottle of coke from the bag, smashing it into One's knee.

One collapsed, Berretta 92 dropping from nerveless fingers and clunking onto the tile floor. Becca took a deep breath, then reversed her grip on the bottle and shoved it into One's mouth. Blood spurted over her fingers as she yanked the bloody pen from Three and stabbed it through the bottle's neck, piercing the lid and the aerosol hidden inside.

Leaving the concealed sedative and coke to fountain into One's mouth, she drew her pistol and moved toward Two.

He jerked away from the table, holding up a grenade in his right hand, his middle finger keeping the spoon down. 'Don't move!'

Becca made a point of pretending to flick the safety. 'Alright,' she said, slowly moving toward the back door, away from both Two and the sedative. She took a breath. 'Just take it easy... neither of us wants to die.'

'I'm not going to fall for this negotiation crap. Fuck you.' Two stuck his middle finger up at her, the spoon flying off to clatter against the wooden cupboards. 'Oops...'

Becca took two strides forward and hit him in the face with the butt of her pistol while he stared at the live grenade.

The grenade hit the floor and skittered into the corner.

Becca grabbed his arm, twisting it high up his back, and shoved him over to the grenade. A kick to the side of his knee dropped Two to the ground. She smashed his head into the tiled floor then lay over him, pinning his torso over the live munition.

'No, no – please – please let me up! _Please!_'

* * *

Edward smiled as Oliviero began his routine again: fiddling with his tie, then stirring his lukewarm latte and finally scratching his head before staring intently at the side of the van, as if the grey metal would suddenly turn into a screen to allow them to see inside the target house. 'As an ex-cop, shouldn't you be used to this?'

Oliviero shrugged and leaned back in his seat. 'Used to it, yes. But that doesn't mean I like it. One of the reasons I agreed to switch to the SWA was because I thought I'd have a lot less sitting in a white van and a lot more catching terrorists. I had enough of sitting around being unable to make the country better in the police.'

'You probably get more action with them than with us. I've been in the SWA for slightly over a year now and this is my third contact with terrorists. Most of the time it's surveillance or training and when it's not it's bodyguard duties or... other favours.'

'Favours? Like beating-up awkward journal –'

The speaker crackled. '..._ GET_... _Dau..._' Edward held one hand up as he pressed his headset to his ear with the other.

Over their headsets they could hear thumps that meant Bravo three was limping along the landing above their bug. Edward shrugged. 'We're a very expensive project – each of the girls costs millions alone – so having key people in Lorenzo's pocket is useful.'

They sat in silence for a moment, the only noise someone banging things around and slamming drawers, presumably getting the table ready for what would, once they'd broken the seal on the coke (and its concealed aerosol), be a very literal takeaway.

'Why'd you join?' said Oliviero, turning to look at him.

'The dogsbody sent to make the suggestion to me arrived at our meeting in a Ferrari. I don't know about you, but I didn't make enough in my last job to be able to afford one of those.'

Oliviero looked distinctly disapproving. 'Does the Ferrari make you happy?'

'I don't know. I drive an A-class.'

'_An A-class?_'

Edward nodded. 'It's far more fuel efficient and I only need to be able to go at a hundred and twenty. When are the doctors finishing up with your cyb –'

'_That's fifteen euro fifty, please.'_

That was Becca. There was no sensible reason for Becca to have entered the house, so something must have gone wrong somewhere. Edward mentally rehearsed the steps to debus and go crashing into the target's house.

There was indistinct noise over his headset, Edward pressing it painfully close into his ear in an attempt to make it clearer. _'DON'T MOVE!'_

Both of them jumped, Oliviero spilling his cold coffee all over his suit.

Becca was talking, the words too soft to be clear but slow and soothing enough to set more alarm bells ringing in his head. Three to one against was good enough, and Becca shouldn't have a problem dealing with the two extras if she couldn't disable them all – but she was trying to talk them down from something.

Edward had his headset off almost before the explosion finished stabbing into his ears and was out the van before Oliviero'd shifted so much as a centimetre.

They stuck to the plan: up the road on the house's blind side and then into the back garden. Glass littered the concrete like shards of ice. They stopped before they entered the debris field and pulled out their pistols. Bravo Three was a smoker and even if he had locked the back door after his pre-takeaway cigarette, the hinges were so flimsy one good kick would have them right out.

Edward held up his hand and counted down.

_Three..._

_Two..._

_One..._

He kicked the door in, quickly moving aside for Oliviero to take point before following.

Two of them and Becca were in the kitchen. He crossed over to where Bravo One was lying, the front of his clothes damp and several thin cuts over his face oozing blood. Edward lifted the limp wrist to check for a pulse, smiling when he felt one clearly beating away.

Bravo Three was dead, the bloody hole in his neck and pale face confirming that, which meant one was AWOL...

His eyes went to the hole in the floor and the caked ceiling around it. Now he was looking for it, he could see the... remnants of the last one. Everyone was accounted for.

He finally turned to Becca, lying slumped against the cabinets behind him. Her bloody right arm was glistening in the sunlight, her hands and face peppered with cuts. 'Becca? Can you hear me?' he said as he checked her neck for a pulse and placed a hand on her chest to check for breathing. Pulse was fine, breathing was fine. He ran his hands up her legs, over her chest and...

Her left shoulder felt distinctly abnormal – she probably hit that first when the explosion threw her back. 'You take him,' he said, snapping Oliviero out of his staring contest with Becca's battered body. 'I'll carry Becca.'

'Shouldn't you put her on a spinal board?' said Oliviero as he pulled his radio out to give Alfonso and Giorgio the okay to come in to search the house for intelligence.

Edward shook his head, carefully lifting Becca up to try and avoid damaging her shoulder further. 'The faster we get the intelligence decaying inside of him out the better. Besides, as long as the brain is intact everything else can be repaired.'

Becca stirred as they reached the end of the drive, several tons lighter as she opened her blue eyes and began looking around. She leaned her head against his, lighter in his arms now. 'I can walk.'

Edward let her slide out of his grip, frowning as she winced when her back slid along his arm. Moving back to Oliviero, he slipped an arm around One's back and picked up the pace, moving twice as fast now that both of them were shifting the one lucky-not-to-be-dead weight.

'Doesn't that hurt?' said Oliviero as they approached the van, Becca opening the back for them.

'It's not that bad,' said Becca, stepping out of the way so they could slide One inside.

'But your shoulder's broken!'

'They can just replace it when we get back. It's not a significant issue,' she added as she climbed in and closed the doors, firmly shutting down the conversation.

'Is there a problem?' said Edward as he and Oliviero climbed in the front.

Oliviero snapped his seatbelt into place with a click. 'No, no problem.'

* * *

_Monza, Milan, Lombardy. 06/01/2006._

Edward hated this particular safehouse. The way they drove it was only fifteen minutes from where they'd snatched di Rosso, so it should let them follow-up any leads from the initial interrogation rapidly enough that, even if Padania discovered they'd lifted him, they'd be unable to strip sites of valuable intelligence. It was just a pity that Edward had to do it here because of the time it would take to ship di Rosso back to Rome for the specialists and the clinical, clean interrogation wing.

But then di Rosso disliked the grimy, dingy apartment just as much as he did based on the sheer number of disdainful looks at the bloodstained and smelly furniture. This was exactly what was wrong with the system. Come the day of the glorious revolution, society's black sites would have proper, Italian, _handmade _uncomfortable wooden chairs instead of the cheap Ikea one di Rosso was currently sitting on.

Not that di Rosso had actually said that. Edward was reading between the lines.

Well, obscenities.

'I'm going for a coffee,' said Edward, smiling politely at di Rosso. 'I'll be back in half-an-hour and we can continue our conversation.'

He shoved the black hood over di Rosso's head, drawing it tightly shut, then left.

Becca handed him a coffee as he stepped into the observation room. He smiled. 'Thanks. Any news on the laptop?'

Oliviero shook his head as Edward joined him at the one-way mirror. 'They're not going to be able to start on it until they get it back to Rome for one of the techs to look at.'

The three of them stood in silence for a while, watching di Rosso twisting and stretching in an attempt to break the chain locking the handcuffs to the floor. 'Has someone got back with his file?' said Oliviero, gesturing toward di Rosso with his empty water bottle. 'As Leon's courier we must have discovered a secret message he was delivering at some point. Even how we traced him in the first place should be enough to use against him. He's bound to have an ego bigger than the Coliseum.'

'If Becca hasn't told you, the phone hasn't rung,' said Edward, shifting to lean against the grubby wall on the left. 'But I wouldn't recommend getting your hopes up. If Section One say that releasing information will compromise their source, the chance of it changing by passing the request up the chain is negligible.' He took another sip of his coffee. 'Becca...'

Becca nodded and slipped out the door.

'Have you heard from your wife yet?'

Oliviero beamed. 'Yes. She's at the hospital now with Alé. The doctors have had a look at my grandson and –'

The sound of Becca slapping di Rosso's shoulder echoed through the speakers.

Oliviero stared out the one-way mirror.

'And...' prompted Edward.

'Er...' Oliviero tore his wide-eyes back to Edward. 'And... and – and they're very happy with his bloodwork. Alé was hysterical earlier – well, you are with your first child, aren't –'

'_You've children, don't you?' _Oliviero's head jerked around at Becca's soft voice flowing through the speaker._ 'Scream along with me then... this little piggy went to market...'_

Edward clicked his fingers twice, Oliviero turning to look blankly at him. '_Focus_, please?'

'_This little piggy stayed at home...'_

'R-right... well, they just think that he fainted. He –'

'_This little piggy had roast beef...'_

'He's alright now. He's sitting up and giggling along with the DVD that the nurse put on –'

'_And this little piggy went –'_

_Snap._

_Di Rosso screamed._

Edward sighed. 'The nurse put on...'

Oliviero just kept staring into the other room as Becca began explaining the merits of DIY on her captive audience. Edward gave up on small-talk and went back to drinking his coffee as Becca rejoined them.

After another five minutes he went back to continue interrogating di Rosso. He'd begun to make some progress this time: names and places, though whether they were accurate or not was up in the air. Jean wanted the intel _now_, however, so crude and physical was the order of the day. The cells di Rosso couriered for were the dim, flickering bulbs of Padania, and he was no bright spark himself: hopefully that'd mean the lies would be transparent. Behind the prisoner, a small light near the ceiling turned green.

Edward left again, Becca meeting him outside the room. 'Mr Silvero's redecorated,' she said, leading him toward the other interrogation room.

Oliviero had indeed done some redecorating, using his gun to give the ceiling an abstract, _cerebral_ splash of colour.

Edward paused in the doorway, looking between the body and the exit to the cells. 'Get him dressed up like a prisoner,' he said, putting a hand on Becca's uninjured shoulder and making her pensive expression disappear. If Oliviero was too soft that was his problem; Becca shouldn't let that impede her performance. 'We're going to be nice to our guest and leave his hood off when he next goes back to his cell.' He smiled. 'Just don't forget to accidentally leave the door open when you're done.'

* * *

_Medical Centre, SWA Compound, near Rome._

Becca was sitting on the hospital bed waiting for him when Edward made his normal nine-thirty check on her. It was the first time he'd had to do this for an injury sustained in the field, though. It rankled.

'They gave you a clean bill of health?' he said as she looked up and smiled at him.

Becca nodded and jumped off the bed. 'And the usual spiel about how it was you they needed to talk to. I've got a hundred percent mobility in my shoulder again and I'm mission-ready. Was there anything in the morning briefing?'

Edward shook his head and gestured her toward the door. 'Nothing happening other than waiting on the type ones to raid the warehouse di Rossi was so kind as to tell us about.' He smiled at her to lessen the sting of his next words. 'Let's not make a habit of this, Becca.'

'Yes Sir. Is it the normal routine?'

'Normal routine. I'll see you for lunch.'

Footsteps entered the room behind him. 'Edward.'

Dr Bianchi. Just what he needed. 'Off you go,' he said to Becca before turning around to an irate Bianchi. 'Can I help you?'

Bianchi stared at him from the doorway. 'By telling your cyborg to behave herself.'

Edward smiled placatingly as Becca moved to stand next to the door. 'Of course. I'm sorry if she caused a problem.'

He was sure they'd have different definitions of _problem _this time too, but words were free.

Bianchi paused, weighing up his words. 'I have the form for you here, and the equipment is in the cart outside. Are we going to have to go through this with you again as well?'

'Rebecca is more than capable of understanding the outcomes of your tests and determining how she feels: you don't need to repeat them with me in the room. It'd be a lot less hassle for everyone if you let them sign themselves out. The second generation, at least; Rebecca and some of the others are old enough to be able to legally discharge themselves.'

Bianchi shrugged. 'You sign all other non-personal arms out from the armoury, don't you?'

And signed her on and off base every time – usually. It was a pain in the arse. 'So Rebecca is _non-personal? _Communal property?'

Bianchi waved the point away. 'Look, Edward, if she wasn't part of our programme you would have to sign her out of the hospital as her guardian, so why do we have to go through this every single time? Needing to do the tests with you present wastes my staff's time as well as yours, but that's what the regulations –'

'_All medical staff to ICU_,' said the tannoy calmly. '_All medical staff to ICU. All medical staff to ICU._'

Bianchi gave him a look that meant the discussion was only postponed before rushing away and unblocking the exit.

Edward could see the unrestrained curiosity in Becca's eyes. 'Hopefully Henrietta's lost it again and there's a terrorist spilling his guts literally before he's done so metaphorically,' he said as they left, quickly reaching the lobby and heading out of the medical annex, back to the main complex.

News travelled fast, and bad news, in Edward's extensive experience of it, travelled even faster, especially within such an isolated environment as this one. Spooks never stopped being spooks: they just went looking for gossip instead of intelligence. Despite that, Lorenzo still hadn't developed the ESP he'd need to already know that he'd had another difference of opinion with the medical staff, so Ferro's interception of them on the Director's orders had to be unrelated. Becca watched him leave her with a nervous expression.

'Edward,' said Lorenzo as he entered the Director's office. 'Take a seat.'

Edward did as he was bid, comfortably seating himself in the leather chair on the other side of the desk. Lorenzo let the silence linger. That was fine by Edward: His entire job revolved around having the patience of all the saints in the Vatican, so a little silence was hardly going to disconcert him.

'What happened to Oliviero?'

Edward started to smile in relief before realising that probably wasn't the best expression to wear when asked about the death of a fellow operative in a safehouse where the only other witness was your own fanatically loyal cyborg. Between their fanatics and the terrorists' fanatics, it was a miracle Italy hadn't been destroyed. At least it wasn't his country. 'Rebecca was preparing the prisoner for further interrogation. Oliviero was too soft to handle a young woman doing the job.'

Lorenzo frowned. 'Preparing the prisoner for further interrogation after having being blown up and with damaged limbs.'

'Rebecca was still able to function effectively and the intel was decaying inside him.'

Lorenzo nodded and leaned back in his chair. 'There will have to be an investigation into it: someone will accuse us of a cover-up otherwise. Fortunately it's all on tape so there's little you or your cyborg can be accused of. How would you characterise your relationship with Rebecca?'

'Effective.'

'Italian has many wonderful words for you to construct elaborate sentences from. Why not sample some?'

Edward smiled. 'She's like my favourite gun-dog.'

Lorenzo stared at him for a moment. 'Hillshire regularly expenses bears and clothes to his account. Jose expenses everything from ice-cream to antique kalidascopes and only escapes a charge because our entire budget is so black it's not just buried, but somewhere underneath the pacific. What do you expense?'

He could feel jaws closing around him. 'Very little other than necessaries. We have a meal every so often and that's it.'

'Necessaries that include speeding tickets, expensive make-up and even more clothes than Alessandro's cyborg?'

He'd had an answer prepared for a while; it was even true. 'Cyborg or not, when we're practicing advanced driving, we can't always spot the undercover cars before they turn the sirens on, and as a clandestine outfit I can hardly pull out my ID to every provincial policeman I see. As undercover operatives, we need the clothes to be able to function and the make-up... call them alternative procurement. And I should say that it's good quality but not that expensive make-up, and the clothes are all from charity shops.'

'And Rebecca's trespassing?'

'Practise infiltrating a hostile environment and interfacing with civilians.'

'She was sneaking into a hotel room!'

Edward shrugged apologetically. 'If we tried somewhere challenging she might have to terminally defend herself.' And they had to have some time where Becca could act like an ordinary girl. They both savoured the hotel time – and he even paid for the room himself.

Lorenzo consulted a sheet of paper on his desk. It seemed to be an uncomfortably long list. 'The mechanics are now complaining about you twice a month.'

'Practise makes perfect, Sir.'

'The cyborgs are not authorised to drive the agency's vehicles.'

He just looked at him. Everyone knew Lorenzo turned a blind eye to a type-two cyborg driving. Even the boss couldn't be so tied by the rules as to not realise what an asset it could be where needed.

'Your cyborg has very... practical... interests, Edward.'

'I take Rebecca's training and performance very seriously, Sir.'

A smile flickered across Lorenzo's face. 'She is admirably... _trained_. Even if her initial co-ordination and control of her new body could have been just as well developed on our piano as the three figure drum-kit you bought her.'

Edward paused for a long moment, caught. 'The same skills that play a piano can't be used to play a prisoner with hammers, Sir. And it's communal property.' His voice was far too stiff.

The Director's... almost approaching jovial... mood slipped away as quickly as it came. 'According to the Medical staff, Rebecca seems to have a relatively normal relationship with you.'

Relatively was another one of those wonderfully versatile modifiers, not that he was going to let Lorenzo go fishing for more details.

Lorenzo steepled his hands, leaning forward to look over them at Edward. 'Oliviero was three days away from taking delivery of his new cyborg,' he continued as Edward climbed into his metaphorical EOD suit to be ready for the imminent bombshell. 'This is a prototype that is being created primarily for its civilian potential, but there is no harm in trying it for its potential covert benefits. Unfortunately, cyborgs don't have a shelf life.'

Ah. 'There's a difference between being independent and being able to cope with the arrival of a new baby. She's less needy than the type ones, and we have both a working relationship and a personal relationship, but the drugs could still throw a spanner in the works. Fear of neglect and jealousy toward a sister is one thing, jealousy where both my girls are constantly armed is another.'

Lorenzo stood, Edward automatically following suit. 'Are you turning down the assignment?'

And let Jean or, worse, Jose have her? Edward was faintly aware he'd just been played like Henrietta's fiddle. Well, played by someone else on Henrietta's fiddle. Henrietta was good, but she wasn't that good.

Actually, he'd been played by Rico – before she got her prosthetics. 'No Sir.'

'Excellent,' said Lorenzo, reaching out to shake his hand. 'Bianchi will show you to your new charge.'

And no doubt lecture him while doing it. Wonderful.

* * *

Bianchi looked excessively grim, even if Edward had once again discharged Becca without signing the form or getting her tested for a second time. 'This way,' he said, leading Edward through the security doors and toward the labs and orientation suites. 'What have you been told about your new cyborg?'

'Nothing,' said Edward, trying to meet Bianchi's evasive eyes. 'What has the Boss conveniently forgotten?'

Bianchi fiddled with the keypad to Observation Room 5, then repeatedly messed up his retina scan. 'Our cover is a medical research wing into cybernetic implants, producing things like artificial limbs for children.' The door beeped confirmation and unlocked with a click. 'Her file is open on the computer. At this point, physical and major psychological alterations are impossible, but we can probably fiddle with her hobbies if you like. I need to get back to ICU – Jose is stable but critical and Triela isn't much better off.' Bianchi waved him inside.

Sounded like they should have waited for corroboration before launching the raid after all. If Jose was in that state, he dreaded to think what Henrietta had done to any terrorists in the vicinity. Hopefully they got something out of the mission, even if it was where to go looking to hold a 9mm wake. It took him a moment to adjust to the dark room lit by the cold blue monitor, then looked through the one way mirror into the hospital room it observed.

And discovered just why Oliviero suddenly couldn't hack it.

Lying in the pristine white bed, cocooned in wires and tubes running to every part of her body, was a three year old girl.

On the whole, Edward was all in favour of the SWA. The public got better medical care, the state got elite clandestine – though by now maybe that should be covert – operatives, and the girls got to live longer, in a healthier state and with a happier time than they would have otherwise. Henrietta, Rico – they were fine. A three year old...

At least the terrorists would get one hell of a surprise when she – when _they _– went operational.


End file.
